n8 DIARY OF EUSTON

pretty apartments furnished with all manner of conven-
iences and privacy.

There is a library full of excellent books; bathing- rooms,
elaboratory, dispensary, a decoy, and places to keep and fat
fowl in. He had now in his new church (near the gar-
den) built a dormitory, or vault, with several repositories,
in which to bury his family.

In the expense of this pious structure, the church is
most laudable, most of the houses of God in this country
resembling rather stables and thatched cottages than
temples in which to serve the Most High. He has built
a lodge in the park for the keeper, which is a neat dwell-
ing, and might become any gentleman. The same has he
done for the parson, little deserving it for murmuring
that my Lord put him some time out of his wretched
hovel, while it was building. He has also erected a fair
inn at some distance from his palace, with a bridge of
stone over a river near it, and repaired all the tenants'
houses, so as there is nothing but neatness and accommo-
dations about his estate, which I yet think is not above
^1,500 a year. I believe he had now in his family one
hundred domestic servants.

His lady (being one of the Brederode's daughters,
grandchild to a natural son of Henry Frederick, Prince
of Orange) is a good-natured and obliging woman. They
love fine things, and to live easily, pompously, and hos-
pitably; but, with so vast expense, as plunges my Lord
into debts exceedingly. My Lord himself is given into
no expensive vice but building, and to have all things
rich, polite, and princely. He never plays, but reads
much, having the Latin, French, and Spanish tongues in
perfection. He has traveled much, and is the best bred
and courtly person his Majesty has about him, so as the
public Ministers more frequent him than any of the rest
of the nobility. While he was Secretary of State and
Prime Minister, he had gotten vastly, but spent it as
hastily, even before he had established a fund to main-
tain his greatness; and now beginning to decline in favor
(the Duke being no great friend of his), he knows not
how to retrench. He was son of a Doctor of Laws, whom
I have seen, and, being sent from Westminster School to
Oxford, with intention to "be a divine, and parson of Ar-
a village near Brentford, when Master of Artsended and accommodated as at their home, in brick, and but